The Annihilation of Foreverland

order. He always did. You don’t run an island like that for thirty years without ironing out a few wrinkles.
    “We’ve had some problems, Mr. Jackson. I’d like to start in the network room.”
    Mr. Jackson cradled his hand against his chest. It was probably broke. The Director moved the bed out of his way. He wasn’t concerned about the Investors or the aborted crossover lying in the bed.
    “Problems,” Mr. Jackson said. “Yeah, I think we need to start in the observation booth, Director. Some of the Investors don’t have a pulse.”
    “Yes, we’ll get to that. First thing’s first. Let’s have a look at the network room.”
    The boys watched them cross the room. Mr. Jackson kept his distance. Why doesn’t he just knock them out?
    The Director was barefoot. He let Mr. Jackson lead the way. They stepped over Mr. Lee – spread-eagle in the doorway – and crossed the hall to the only other door on the fourth floor.
    There were endless racks of servers in the network room that went up to the ceiling in aisle s that paralleled the curvature of the building. The network room took up half of the fourth floor. Midway around the semi-circular room was a large monitor with continuously scrolling data.
    Mr. Jackson sat down. His left hand took the majority of Zin’s stick. He couldn’t move his fingers. Broke, for sure . He placed it gently on his lap and worked the mouse with his right.
    “What the hell happened?” he asked. “Power is out on the entire island. The Chimney only has about three hours of charge left in the backup generators. And the Investors…” He looked back. “How could this happen?”
    The Director stood behind him, arms crossed, staring at the monitor.
    “Something unexpected happened, Mr. Jackson.” He fiercely scratched his beard. “Call up the Looping Program, please.”
    “Looping…? That’s not active. We shut that down after Danny Boy hacked into it and thought it was the outside world.”
    “Humor me.”
    The Director was acting weird. He was an odd-ball, but none of this seemed all that alarming. Things went wrong, but never at this magnitude. And now he was concerned about some insignificant computer program.
    “All right, well, let’s see.” Mr. Jackson executed a few commands, the screen went blank. More data came up. He leaned closer and squinted. “That’s strange. It’s been activated. How did you…”
    “What’s in there? Tell me what you see.”
    Mr. Jackson wasn’t aware that the Director couldn’t decipher the data.
    He used his good hand to peck out a few more commands to interpret what he was seeing. It didn’t seem possible, but there was an identity inside the Looping Program that was often used to mimic the illusion of Foreverland, but they didn’t use it that often. An identity could be damaged if it spent too much time solely in the artificial circuits of the network. That was why the Director had become the interface between the boys and the network, serving as an organic “computer” that became Foreverland.
    But now there was someone in there. Someone got left behind. Everyone should be out of the Haystack.
    Mr. Jackson leaned closer. He could see just fine, the monitor was six feet wide. He leaned closer because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Couldn’t believe who it was that was inside the Looping Program.
    “Tell me what you see,” the Director said. “Tell me.”
    Mr. Jackson turned slowly. His lips were moving, finally uttered, “Password, Director. Give me the password.”
    The Director stared back.
    Mr. Jackson waited.
    And waited.
    He knew what he had seen inside the Looping Program. He saw the identity that was trapped inside it.
    And then he saw the Director put his hand inside his pocket.
    Mr. Jackson didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to escape. He just waited for the darkness of unconsciousness to arrive.
    It was painless, when it did.
    Mr. Jackson crumpled in the chair, falling to the floor in a heap.
    He didn’t see the Director watching him. Didn’t see the Director look at the meaningless data on the monitor. The Director couldn’t interpret it, but Mr. Jackson’s expression told him everything he needed to know. Asking him for the crossover password to confirm who the identity was inside the Director’s body.
    Mr. Jackson also didn’t see the Director go to the window and begin to weep.

69
    “Something’s not right,” Zin said. “That guy has no mercy and he tells us to just hang out after we